The Space Between
by Savendia
Summary: Daniel was Jack's best friend. Meridian tag.


Here's my Meridian fic. I've been trying to write one since I saw Meridian a few months ago (I'm sort of new to Stargate - I only discovered it last year and I'm only now on season six). It's about Jack dealing with Daniel's ascension. I wanted to write something a little longer than this turned out to be, but it seems I just don't know how to write long. If anyone has any tips, I'd love to hear them... I've been trying to write a legit story for awhile now and I just can't. I look at all the novel-length stuff here - sometimes with a sequel or two as well! - and I just have no idea how you guys do it.

Well, here's this anyways. I don't know if it's any good or if anyone will like it but what the heck. I'm here because I'm having fun, not because I'm a brilliant writer. If I were a brilliant writer, I'd probably have published something already.

Speaking of which... Disclaimer: If I owned Stargate, that would mean I _had_ published something already, which would mean I was a brillant writer... So if you think I'm that great, then yeah, I own it! ;D

Also, you have no idea how much I appreciate people who take the time to tell me what they think. If you have constructive critisism, I would love to hear it!

* * *

A world without Daniel is a little empty. Not by much, and it is almost imperceptible. Coffee in the morning is still hot, bitter and strong. The rising sun still sears a white mirage into the blue sky. Jack's car still chokes its way down to Base with all of its usual reluctance. People still walk down the street, down the hall, into the elevator and into their offices and they are laughing, somber, mellow, cheerful and sad.

But not in a particular way. They do not laugh for Daniel, nor do they cry for him. Jack does not laugh or cry. He only walks down from the street, through the halls, into the elevator and into the deserted office of an archeologist. It is a cluttered office, dusty with disuse, and it is unfamiliar to Jack. He recognizes the number on the door and the newly unearthed tome Daniel's anthropological side was so thrilled about. He recognizes the pictures on the walls and the dark stain on the floor. If he tries, he can almost hear Daniel's yelp of dismay, he can almost smell the acrid scent of the coffee puddling around the shattered remains of the mug. He can almost hear the laughter – his laughter and, after an initial flash of anger, Daniel's laughter.

Almost.

He can _almost _hear it in the same way that the office is _almost_ familiar, but _almost_ never meant anything that mattered.

He wonders that the Universe does not seem to notice. The world continues with normalcy, and he supposes this is right. Daniel was a slight man, and it stands to reason that the space left by his absence is slight as well. It is like another pebble has unwound itself from its fellows and skittered into the abyss; only noticeable if you happen to be the pebble it was propping up.

Jack leaves the office that is not Daniel's. He's spent his whole life propping his little pebbly self up just fine. If the rock beside him wants to take a nose-dive into oblivion, so be it. He's stuck up here just fine.

The setting sun reeks of normalcy even more so than the office that is not Daniel's. Watery stars shimmer through a haze of failing light like little beacons waving their lighted batons at nightmares in invitation. There was a time when the same beacons signaled to comfort and calm, to grinning faces shining around a campfire and outrageous stories and laughter. No nightmare dared intrude the sanctuary of that closed circle.

Jack can't recall when the night sky got so big. Maybe it was the first time he went through the 'gate and found himself staring at an alien sky and looking for home in a sparkling black soup that went on… forever. Forever, he'd realized, standing alone in the darkness, was a big place.

But it didn't stay big for long. The sense of space vanished with the solitude, and all because of his three mismatched, geeky kids. Forever didn't feel so vast when his own personal forever was waving mission reports in his face and arguing loudly over thermo-nuclear reactions.

The sun yields so easily to night. She sinks defeated into the ground without a fight, letting her brilliance be stolen and diffused among a thousand half-hearted rhinestones. Jack counts them as they appear – one, two, three. Twelve. Nineteen. Forty-seven. Two-hundred and seventeen.

And on and on. A million imposters crowing triumphantly at the vanquished sun. An infinity, a forever, of gaudy, glittering, glued-on sparkles to replace the vital warmth and heat of a sun. But then, that's all the sun is, too. If you pull back far enough, everything becomes small. Everything becomes insignificant in the grand, black scheme of forever.

There is no space between the stars, not really. There is no empty blackness – the very nature of infinityensures that there is always another star between the lights that are visible to us. The sense of space, the illusion of emptiness is just that – an illusion. The same way that the flaring, roiling, life-giving suns are nothing more than pinpricks in a velvet dome is an illusion. There is no space between the stars. It's just that some of them are too far away to see.


End file.
